Daylight Saving Time 2013: 3 Things You Didn’t Know

Zoonar/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Daylight saving time started at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning and will run through Nov. 3. So while you lost an hour during the switch, you gained an extra hour of daylight. Here are three things you might not know about daylight saving time:

Daylight Saving Time Was Conceived as a Way to Save Energy

In the U.S., daylight saving time was first used during World War I to conserve resources. It was reinstated again during World War II until Sept. 1945. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 created a standardized system to observe daylight saving time.

The Department of Energy studied the energy savings in 2008. They found that during daylight saving time, U.S. electricity use decreased by 0.5 percent per day, which added up to 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours, enough to power about 122,000 average U.S. homes for a year.

Daylight Saving Time Begins in March and Ends in November

From World War II until recently, the seven-month period of daylight saving time in the U.S. ran from April until mid-October.

But in 2007, Congress adjusted daylight saving time to begin three weeks earlier and end one week later, a move they hoped would help save energy. At the time, they pointed to the fact that longer daylight in the evening hours reduced the need to turn on lights in homes at night.

Daylight Saving Time Helps Prevent Traffic Injuries and Reduces Crime

The extra hour of daylight has been credited for preventing traffic injuries and reducing crime as “people travel to and from school and work and complete errands during the daylight,” and “more people are out conducting their affairs during the daylight rather than at night, when more crime occurs,” according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.